


A Piacere

by PandoraTheExplorer



Series: Children of Despair [4]
Category: Dangan Ronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Genre: Babies, Domestic Fluff, Light Angst, Multi, Singing, The warriors aren't in jail but they're not allowed to have power again, because to be fair they are responsible for the deaths of thousands, post-tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29540292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandoraTheExplorer/pseuds/PandoraTheExplorer
Summary: The former Warriors of Hope sing for each other.
Relationships: Daimon Masaru/Kemuri Jataro/Shingetsu Nagisa/Utsugi Kotoko
Series: Children of Despair [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1134899
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	A Piacere

**Author's Note:**

> This was in my WIPs for like 2 years. I started writing this in like 2019 and came up with the idea for the story in like 2017. Holy shit. But yeah. Back in grade 10 I was obsessing over UDG with a comrade who's only recently played it and back then didn't know wtf I was talking about. So I came up with a bunch of fic ideas back then and this was one of the many I started on a whim and didn't finish for a while.
> 
> Anyway enjoy:

Out of all of the Warriors of hope, Kotoko Utsugi was undoubtedly the best singer. Of course, she and Monaca were the only ones who ever sang to the Warriors before their revolution in Towa City, and the other Warriors didn’t like to consider Monaca one of them anymore, so Kotoko was the best by default.

Still, years of being a child actress meant voice lessons for Kotoko’s already sugar-sweet voice. And as the years passed, sugar condensed into honey, and then into caramel. With some casual practice, the childish cracks in her voice were smoothed over. The pitch of her voice danced fluidly from note to note, rich with emotion. When one of the boys-her boys now-had trouble sleeping, or when she wanted to dance with them, or when she just needed to fill the empty silence, she filled the air with the sweetness of her voice.

~

Masaru Daimon didn’t care about singing one way or another. While he liked music, the headphones he wore during the revolution were only an accessory. Despite Monaca’s offers to find him a device to play music from, he didn’t want the extra noise distracting him from his duties of leader. There was no music to sing along to during the days of the revolution, and afterwards Kotoko had always been the one to sing, so Masaru never saw any need.

Then they were fourteen, hiding from adults and Monokumas in a broken-down hotel courtesy of Komaru Naegi and her serial killer friend. It must have been about midnight, when Masaru was woken by terrified whimpers on the other side of his bed.

Groggily, he sat up and pulled his arm free from Jataro’s grip. Nagisa was already awake and shaking Kotoko by the shoulders, trying to rouse her from her nightmare. Masaru and Jataro hopped off the bed and crouched on the other side, joining in on Nagisa’s efforts.

Kotoko awoke with a start. She looked around her wildly for a second before leaning into Nagisa’s chest and sobbing. None of the Warriors asked about her nightmare-that was the unspoken rule between them all. If any of the Warriors want to talk about their nightmares, the others would be ready to lend an ear. Otherwise, no one will ever be asked about their dreams.

After Kotoko’s crying had died down a bit, Masaru was surprised to hear that someone had started singing. Seeing the other Warriors’ faces, he was surprised to find that the voice was his own. He was singing an old children’s rhyme he had heard back in kindergarten. He was sure that his singing was nowhere near as nice as Kotoko’s-there were too many wobbly notes and he couldn’t hit some of the high ones. Nevertheless, Kotoko seemed to enjoy the song, and after a few repeats she had slipped back into a deep slumber.

~

Nagisa Shingetsu didn’t like to sing. As a child, any singing was met with a harsh frown and occasionally a slap on the wrist for “not being focused enough” on his studies. Nagisa hadn’t sung in years-more than a decade, probably. He couldn’t remember what he sounded like when singing or if he was a good singer or not. He didn’t particularly care.

Because of the information and help they offered Komaru Naegi and Toko Fukawa in the rebuilding of Towa city, the Warriors of Hope, sans Monaca Towa, were given a choice: become students in the newly rebuilt Hope’s Peak Academy to be monitored by the other Naegi and his army of Future Foundation goons, or be moved to a settlement in the rural outskirts of Kyushu, so that their hard labour may one day fix the world they had once destroyed. Obviously, banishment was the more appealing choice. None of the Warriors wanted anything more to do with Hope’s Peak, and it wasn’t like the orchard they were assigned to didn’t have a nice view of the mountain. The work was only tiring during harvest season, and their coworkers and neighbours-former children swayed by despair like them-were fun to talk to after work.

One night when they were twenty-three, the other workers in Masaru, Jataro, and Kotoko’s section of the orchard gathered in the barn to celebrate the end of the harvest. Due to popular demand, Nagisa had borrowed the projector used by his accounting office and displayed old videos of karaoke songs with lyrics flashing across the screen. Kotoko had dragged Masaru up to sing with her almost every other song, cheered on by the other farmers, and, loudest of all, Nagisa and Jataro.

After the tenth or so song, Masaru broke away to sit with the other boys, Kotoko whining after him to come back and sing the next song with her. Nagisa gave the man a sympathetic look and handed him a glass of water.

“Can one of you go with her?” Masaru pleaded, his voice hoarse.

“Not it,” Jataro replied almost immediately.

“Nagisa?” Masaru said, scooting his chair closer to the other man’s wheelchair with the puppy-dog eyes that Nagisa used to be _sure_ he would grow out of with age. “Nagisaaaaaaaaa-“

“I don’t really sing,” Nagisa said.

“Babe?” Masaru asked, leaning even closer, “Nagisa, my honey my angel one of the only three loves of my life?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nagisa noticed Kotoko starting to approach them. If Kokoto were to utilize her puppy-dog eyes as well, the two would be unstoppable. Nagisa grimaced. They were too powerful. The only option at this point is to surrender.

Masaru gave Nagisa a big, shit eating grin. “Go get ‘em, babe,” he said, giving Nagisa a peck on the cheek. Jataro laughed and kissed his other cheek. Resigned, Nagisa wheeled himself to the front of the barn beside Kotoko, who handed him a microphone with a flourish.

The song wasn’t that bad. Nagisa had heard Kotoko singing it before a few times, so it wasn’t hard to follow the lyrics and beat. It was a fun song, though the knowledge that everyone was watching him kept Nagisa from getting into the flow as much as he thought he would have if it were just him and his three fiancées. Still, Nagisa had forgotten how fun it was to sing.

The song finished, and Nagisa glanced at the crowd around them, who were quiet for a moment before breaking into polite applause. Ah. Maybe he should get used to singing at home before he sang at more karaoke parties. Kotoko handed their microphones off to some other coworkers and headed back to where Masaru and Jataro were waiting.

Jataro bounced in his chair. “You were amazing, Nagisa!”

“Really?” Nagisa asked, parking his wheelchair in his old spot, “I didn’t think I sounded that good, to be honest.”

“Oh no,” Masaru said, “You sounded awful.”

“Yeah,” Kotoko chimed in, ignoring Jataro’s “don’t be mean!” “You were out of tune for, like, the entire song.”

“Oh,” Nagisa said, dismayed.

“Aww,” Kotoko said, putting her arms around Nagisa’s neck, “Don’t be upset. That’s not the point! 

“The point is that you tried your best,” Jataro said, “and we love you for that.”

Nagisa put his hand over Kotoko’s. His wedding was in two hundred and seventy-three days, he calculated. If he picked a song tonight and sang it twice a day, he would likely sound good enough to sing at the wedding if the others wanted Karaoke there. But he had to account for the others hearing him practicing if he wanted it to be a surprise. And singing is distracting when he’s working, but could he fit in more focused practice during his breaks? And-

~

Jataro Kemuri’s head rested on Kotoko’s hospital bed. His right hand held Kotoko’s hand, and his left hand was clasped across the bed with Nagisa’s. Beside Nagisa, Masaru snored loudly, his feet draped across Kotoko’s legs and his torso dangling from his plastic folding chair in an uncomfortable looking position. Jataro wasn’t very comfortable in his chair, either, but that hardly mattered today. Today, he-and Masaru and Nagisa, of course-became a father. And Kotoko was a mother.

The four of them had been so nervous when they discovered that Kotoko was pregnant. To say that they had bad experiences with parents was an understatement. How were the four of them supposed to be good parents for their child when their own parents never taught them how?

But then again, maybe the love they were supposed to perform was similar to the kind of love they learned from Komaru Naegi. Or the kind they learned from the other banished children from their farm. It’s been years. More years than Jataro had ever lived with his demon. With the therapists from the farm and the Future Foundation and the support from their other friends, Jataro could almost say that he and the other former Warriors of Hope were all better.

Of course, that didn’t mean that Masaru wouldn’t occasionally be caught hitting his arm. It didn’t mean that Jataro wouldn’t sometimes wake up and be consumed by how much he hated himself. It didn’t mean that Kotoko wouldn’t sometimes flinch away from one of the boys when they kissed her, or that Nagisa wouldn’t intermittently stay up for days on end in his office, studying towards expectations no one ever had of him. They still had episodes, but they were rare now. Jataro knew that they would all be fine, as long as they had each other.

Which was why they were all sleeping in a room in the local hospital, a bundle containing their new baby nestled in between Kotoko and Nagisa’s arms. They weren’t sure who the baby’s biological father was-she had blue eyes that could have belonged to either Masaru or Nagisa, while Jataro remembered that his mother had blue eyes as well. But Jataro knew it didn’t really matter. If the child belonged to one of them, she belonged to all of them.

For what seemed like hours, Jataro enjoyed this tranquility with his family-and the newest addition to it-then a small wail cut through the air.

Nagisa cracked open one eye. “The baby’s fussing,” he muttered sleepily.

“Ugh,” Kotoko groaned, not opening her eyes, “I’ll take care of it.”

After a few attempts, it became clear that their new daughter wasn’t hungry. Masaru confirmed that she didn’t need her diaper changed, either. For nearly half an hour, the four took turns holding their child and attempting to comfort her, but the crying never ceased.

Jataro saw the dark circles under his spouses’ eyes. “I can take her for now,” he said, putting a hand on Masaru’s shoulder, “You guys should get some more sleep.”

Kotoko tiredly waved her hand in a “go ahead” gesture and leaned back into her pillows. By the time Jataro took the baby from Masaru, the red-headed man was already nodding off. Nagisa glanced at Jataro. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” he asked.

“Sure,” Jataro said, giving Nagisa a small peck on the forehead, “We’re just going to take a walk.” Nagisa nodded and took Masaru’s hand before closing his eyes.

The baby still cried in Jataro’s arms. He wasn’t sure how the rest of the Warriors fell asleep through this noise, but then again, none of them had had a wink of sleep for at least twenty four hours now.

The hall was empty except for the occasional nurse checking in on the patients. Jataro wandered through the hall, patting the baby’s back in a way that he hoped was soothing. The hall stretched to a glass door leading to the garden outside.

Jataro strolled along the dirt path, holding his daughter closer to his chest in case she was cold in the brisk air. They should think of a name for the baby soon, he thought. They had a few names they were considering before the baby was born, but for some reason, none of them felt right.

Nagisa had brought home four giant baby name books from the local library one day, and they had studied each name within the books, debating them for hours on end. They obviously couldn’t pick the names of any of the many people they know from work-that would be rude. But a name that they haven’t encountered before also didn’t feel significant enough for their daughter. And purposely naming her after someone...well...

That was a common enough practice nowadays. Nagisa had once told him about a self-help book that became pretty famous in some cities. To remove oneself from the grief for someone who died, the book said, one should name something-an object, a pet, or even a child-after that person, so the name would be associated with something new instead of the person who died.

Jataro was considering a name, and he knew his husbands and wife were probably considering the same name. But it would be just like naming their daughter after someone at the farm. From what he heard last, their daughter’s would-be namesake was alive and well with her own family and friends.

But then again, she had been dead to all of them for a long time.

The baby continued to cry. Some father he was, he thought bitterly. He hadn’t even had this child for two days, and she’s already crying like she couldn’t stand to be around him. Maybe she had caught a glimpse of his face, and her infant brain was so traumatized by what she saw that she could do nothing but howl in pain.

He grimaced. Maybe he should just take the baby back to the hospital room, walk away, and never come back. He breathed harder. He was spiralling again, Jataro reminded himself. Logically, he knew he wasn’t ugly. He knew that, whatever the reason was for his baby’s inconsolable crying, it wasn’t because of his face. But at times like this, a part of Jataro wouldn’t believe himself. He couldn’t even believe Masaru, Kotoko, and Nagisa’s words sometimes.

A tug at his shirt brought his attention back to the baby in his arms. His baby had somehow poked her small hand out of her bundle and had grabbed onto his shirt along with a handful of blanket. For a brief moment, her face unscrunched and Jataro saw again the blue eyes they couldn’t figure out the origins from. The baby let out two more wails, then stopped, her blue eyes, tinted green from the glow of the yellow lamps along the path, fixed on her father’s purple ones.

Jataro could believe her.

The baby wasn’t crying anymore, but it also seemed like she wouldn’t go to sleep anytime soon. Jataro kept walking, rocking her. Was this how all parents felt when holding their children? Jataro knew that couldn’t be the case. If it was, then why did his mother do what she did to him? Why did the others’ parents do what they did?

Jataro’s own mother hated him. Jataro could tell that much since he was very, very young. He used to think that he’d done something wrong to earn his mother’s ire. And later his therapists changed his mind to accept that some people just didn’t love kids as much as others. And he decided himself that some kids were just harder to love.

That couldn’t be the case for this child, Jataro thought. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where loving this child with all his heart would require any effort at all. Even if, someday, this baby would put on a Monokuma helmet and bring him to the same end he’d brought his mother, Jataro didn’t think he’d be capable of giving her the same look of distain that his mother had in her last moments. 

He would do everything in his power to make sure this child would never doubt that he loved her more than anything else in the world. More than himself. Even more than Masaru, Kotoko, and Nagisa.

Jataro strolled around the garden in silence with the baby, listening to the lullaby of the songbirds and the wind. After what must have been at least twenty minutes, the baby gave a tiny whine.

“Aww, don’t cry again,” Jataro muttered. The baby started crying again.

If Kotoko were here, Jataro thought, she would have started singing to calm the child down. Masaru would have, too. And even Nagisa. It was just the baby’s luck, then that she was stuck with the one parent who never, under any circumstances, sang.

Jataro distantly remembered a time when he was three or four, when he sang a song he learned in kindergarten as he doodled in his room. His mother had stormed in and screamed at him, like she always screamed at him, to be quiet. And because she had decided that Jataro was being insufferable that day, she also tore up the drawings he had made.

Jataro had explained to himself later that it wasn’t just his face that was ugly beyond comprehension. It was better that his mother stopped him from singing any more, he had reasoned at age ten, because if he kept singing, the sound would probably shatter the eardrums of everyone that listened, as well as every glass object within a mile and possibly even cause all the watermelons in Towa City to explode.

At twenty-six, that reasoning seemed way less plausible. But with every song that Kotoko sang them, Jataro found himself wanting to sing along. And each time, the lump in his throat and the ache in his chest would squeeze all the air from his lungs so that, try as he might, no sound came out. He’d long resigned himself to never singing again. It was easier that way.

The baby gasped for breath, then channelled that breath into another wail. But then again, it wasn’t about what’s easiest for _him_ anymore, was it?

Jataro took a shaky breath and began to hum. He didn’t know where he learned the song from, but he guessed it was probably one that Kotoko liked to sing. After the initial few bars, the humming shifted into quiet singing. Jataro continued walking-to where, he wasn’t paying attention-rocking the baby to the slow beat of the song.

By the time the winding path of the garden ended in the concrete steps leading to the glass door to the hospital, the baby was quiet once more. Jataro continued singing, nervous that if he stopped, the baby would open her eyes again and scrunch her nose and continue to scream into the night.

Still singing, Jataro eased open the door to the hospital room and edged inside, pressing his feet slowly on the ground with each step so his shoes didn’t click on the tile. Gently, he set the baby back into her crib. Turning around, he returned to his chair, preparing to sleep on Kotoko’s lap for at least the next hour.

Three pairs of eyes were staring at him in the dark, awestruck. Jataro jumped, almost scraping the chair loudly on the floor before catching himself. He leaned back in his chair. His face was burning.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Masaru breathed.

“I-I-I didn’t-I mean,” Jataro sighed. “I-I don’t want to do it often.”

“It’s alright,” Nagisa said, reaching across Kotoko’s bed to take Jataro’s hand, “You don’t have to sing if you don’t want to.”

“I want to!” Jataro said, almost forgetting to whisper, “For-for her, I mean. If she likes it.”

Kotoko smiled. “Of course she’d like it,” she said, her face a soft expression. “You have the voice of an angel.”

Two days later, after Kotoko and their now named baby was discharged home, Jataro followed the music wafting in the air to Nagisa’s office, which they were converting to a nursery. Their daughter was in her crib, watching her parents with her big blue eyes.

Kotoko sang a cheerful song while unpacking toys from a box, and Nagisa, folding baby clothes, sang along in what could be loosely called an attempt to harmonize. Masaru entered, setting a tray of drinks on the desk, and sang along too, an octave lower than Kotoko.

At the chorus, the three sang the first three lines, and looked at Jataro expectantly. Jataro gave a small smile and shyly sang the last line. The four former Warriors of Hope giddily returned to work on the nursery once more.

~

Monaca didn’t particularly like to sing, but she liked to whistle while she worked. Four people singing around her was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah this ended up being more of a Jataro character study. Anyway the Warriors of Hope have been banished to live as polyamorous farmers after being tried for war crimes. It's probably a better deal than Monaca got. This isn't the last fic I have planned to show the world rebuilding after the Tragedy. After the DR3 killing game most of FF's leadership got wiped out so the DR1 survivors took over. They're trying their best but it's hard.


End file.
